The disclosed embodiments relate to a catheter that may be inserted in, for example, a blood vessel.
Catheters that are inserted in a lumen of a blood vessel are well known in the art. With such catheters, a physician injects liquid chemicals or a contrast agent into a blood vessel. Additionally or alternatively, the physician sends various devices (for example, a stent or an embolic coil) to a lesion of a blood vessel.
Traditionally, catheters include a resin tube and various reinforcing bodies reinforcing the tube. For example, European Patent Application Publication No. EP 1 120 127 A1 describes that a coil body formed by winding a plurality of element wires into a helical coil structure is used as a reinforcing body of a catheter. Moreover, U.S. Publication No. 2007/0208368 discloses a technique of improving rotation transmission performance and press-in performance (pushability) of a catheter by using, as some of a plurality of element wires constituting the coil body, thicker element wires (thick wires) than other element wires (thin wires).